About

The Manchester New Year's Photo is a photoshop meme based on a photograph taken during 2016 New Year's Eve revelry in Manchester, England.

Origin

On January 1st, 2016, the Manchester Evening News in Manchester, England published a photo slideshow documenting the party atmosphere and urban celebrations surrounding the New Year of 2016, titled "New Years Eve 2016 – party, party, party."^[1] The slideshow featured 31 photographs by Evening News photographer Joel Goodman, many of which depicted Manchester residents in various states of intoxication. The 20th image in the slideshow was captioned "Police hold on to a man while another lies in the road."^[1]

Spread

Later that same day, BBC senior news producer Roland Hughes tweeted the photograph, comparing the high level of drama with that of a beautiful painting. As of January 5th, 2016, the tweet has received over 25,600 retweets and 29,600 favorites.^[2]

Due to Hughes' reference to painting in the image, many respondents to the tweet began altering the image to produce painting-like results. One of the first to do so, shortly after Hughes' originally tweet was the user GroenMNG,^[3] who detailed the way in which the photograph reflected what's known as The Golden Ratio or The Fibonacci Spiral, a mathematical concept that is also used in painting to determine balanced compositions.^[4] This second image received more than 860 retweets and 1,000 favorites. Later that day, the photograph was submitted to three notable subreddits: /r/pics,^[5] where it received 2,399 points (89% upvoted); /r/accidentallrenaissance,^[6] where it received 497 points (91% upvoted); and /r/photoshopbattles,^[7] where it received 187 points (93% upvoted) and 48 replies.

The story of the photo was covered widely by news outlets, including the Daily Mail,^[8] the Independent,^[9] and the Guardian.^[10] In addition, Hughes himself wrote a story for the BBC blog about how his tweet caused the photo to become a viral hit.^[11]

Various Examples

External References